Orange County Toll Roads--Flying on a Wing and a Prayer

The San Joaquin transportation toll road is a boondoggle that is poorly conceived, is being mismanaged and will make our traffic situation worse. To solve the traffic congestion, we should tax the existing residents to build road improvements. This is what we thought we were getting with the passage of Measure M.

The pointy-headed bureaucrats have the great idea of having new developments pay fees to partially fund the toll roads. The new developments will generate massive new car trips that will make the traffic worse, not better!

This will have a negative impact on property values and will further erode our quality of life. Then they’ll propose some more developments to partially fund more new roads, ad infinitum .

These “planners” should be called something else because they certainly can’t plan. The Transportation Corridor Agencies have already spent $50 million without building anything. The Environmental Protection Agency has criticized the environmental impact report as being inadequate, and the State Fish and Game Department has recommended the “no project alternative.”

It seems the TCA is out to destroy the environment. The TCA wants to bisect our natural open space with toll road-belching pollution that will adversely affect sensitive natural habitats.

The public needs to be represented at the TCA. “Representatives” from the cities along the proposed routes are voting without ever bothering to hold public hearings in their own communities to hear what their constituents want. They want to assume that we all want more development, want to grade all the natural hillsides and, perhaps then, we can overtake Los Angeles in population.

The TCA will hold a public meeting at 10 a.m. Feb. 14 at Santa Ana City Hall to hear public input. That’s right, on a weekday, during normal working hours. All that is needed for most folks is to take the day off from work, so they can speak to the TCA members and make their views known.

Hopefully, some citizens will be able to do just that. These politicians and bureaucrats need some help. They are out of touch, out of ideas, and out of control.

GENE FELDER, Laguna Beach